BETWEEN THE LINES

Why Obama wants to hide birth certificate

Joseph Farah is founder, editor and chief executive officer of WND. He is the author or co-author of 13 books that have sold more than 5 million copies, including his latest, "The Restitution of All Things: Israel, Christians, and the End of the Age." Before launching WND as the first independent online news outlet in 1997, he served as editor in chief of major market dailies including the legendary Sacramento Union.

Since I began my quixotic campaign to uncover Barack Obama’s birth certificate, many have asked me about the president’s possible motives for hiding it with such tenacity and diligence.

I think there are many plausible motives:

Perhaps something in that birth certificate, if it indeed exists, would contradict assertions Obama has made about his life’s story. These might even involve his true parental heritage. Without a real birth certificate, no one really knows who his parents were. So it is ridiculous even to speculate about whether citizenship could be conferred upon him by his mother, when we don’t know for sure who his mother is.

Perhaps it reveals a foreign birth, as Hawaii allowed for in 1961 while still issuing the “certification of live birth” we have seen posted on his website.

Or perhaps it will show just what Obama has claimed all along – a birth in Hawaii to two officially non-citizen parents, for the purpose of establishing “natural born citizenship” under the Constitution.

What do I mean by that last possibility?

Well, as you know, in 2008, the Senate of the United States held hearings to determine if one of the presidential candidates fulfilled the requirement of being a “natural born citizen.” It wasn’t Barack Obama. It was John McCain, who was born on a U.S. military base overseas to two U.S. citizens.

On April 10 of last year, two senators, both Democrats, Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, introduced a resolution into upper house expressing a sense of the Senate that McCain was indeed a “natural born citizen.”

And, indeed it was. It was also, interestingly, the only such hearing held by the Congress on the subject of “natural born citizenship” and its application to the 2008 presidential race. Why was that interesting? Because everyone involved in this process knew – or should have known – that the life story told by Barack Obama would raise far more doubts about his eligibility than McCain’s.

Notice Leahy did not say one parent citizen would qualify a child for “natural born citizenship.” He indicated it would take two to tango.

He did so again at a Judiciary Committee hearing April 3, when he asked then-Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, a former federal judge, if he had any doubts about McCain’s eligibility to serve as president.

“My assumption and my understanding is that if you are born of American parents, you are naturally a natural-born American citizen,” Chertoff responded – again underlining the fact that both parents would need to be citizens.

And what did Leahy say to that? “That is mine, too.”

By the way, Obama voted for this resolution, so he obviously agrees with the definition of what constitutes a “natural born citizen” – the offspring of two U.S. citizens.

Now, I don’t know who Barack Obama’s parents are, because I have never seen his birth certificate. All I’ve seen is a facsimile of a “certification of live birth” on the Internet. That document, even if genuine, proves nothing about Obama’s birth in Hawaii or who his parents were. Hawaii had a very slipshod practice in 1961 of issuing these documents to babies born outside the country and listing parents who may not have been the parents at all.

But I do know who Barack Obama claims his parents were. According to him, neither one of them was an American citizen able to confer natural born citizenship on a child. One, Barack Obama Sr., was a foreign national from Kenya, and the other, Stanley Ann Dunham, was too young to have qualified under the law for bestowing that privilege on her son, even if the father had been a citizen and even in the unlikely event Obama was actually born in Hawaii!

So, if we are to take Obama at his word, he is not a natural born citizen and not eligible to serve as president.

If he is to be judged by the same standard as his opponent in the race, there is no way he qualifies. That’s what Leahy said. That’s what Chertoff said. That’s what the law says.

A logical question naturally follows: Why didn’t the Congress of the United States hold hearings on Obama’s eligibility when they did so on McCain’s eligibility?

I’m still trying to figure that one out. Maybe the answer is this simple: Because there’s no way Obama would have qualified.

Another logical question follows: Why is this man still serving in the White House and turning the country upside down when he is not even constitutionally eligible?

So, again, I ask: Why doesn’t Obama want to reveal his real birth certificate? Because he wants this discussion of eligibility to go away – once and for all. It is a vulnerability he cannot explain away. So he would rather not discuss it at all.

But let me remind you all, in case you hadn’t considered this: Obama plans to run for re-election in 2012. And that’s why we can never, ever let this matter rest.